“Keep your voice down!” a woman in my neighbourhood shouted. She was telling this to some of her family members – husband, son, daughter, or whoever – in her flat.

Once again she cried: “I said lower your voice, stupid!”

But maybe that did not work, for in the next thirty seconds she exclaimed at the top of her voice: “You, I said lower your voice, don’t you understand it, you!”

This went on for a while. The woman’s voice resounded in the whole building. It was nighttime, around 11:30. Most people were quite. Another neighbour was playing some mournful Hindi song in his/her phone. But, because of the woman’s shouting the sound from the phone died down. The only thing that could be heard for a full ten minute was the woman’s voice asking someone to keep that someone’s voice down. But not even a faint sound came from that someone. All one could hear was “lower your voice” or “keep your voice down” from the woman.

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I shall be good to you as long as you are.
And once you do me a wrong,
Forgive you I shall and not a word I swear

Again, as if nothing has happened, we shall be jolly good.
And once more when you do me another wrong,
Sad and angry though I’ll be, yet a second time, forgive you, I would!

At the third instance, when another wrong to me is done, I shall know
I am but a magnet that would attract more instances for being wronged
Away then, far away, I shall go, and never again my face to you show.

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Many a people claim to know God, and they say that religion is a medium which brings a person closer to God. I accept with open heart all the morality that religion propagates, which helps one love and respect the other, and so on and so forth. But I reject all the mumbo-jumbo ritualistic affairs of religion and prefer to be pragmatic. And yet I would say nothing against any religion as long as the practitioner and believers of those religions mind their own business and abstain from telling me what according to them is right (because they are trying to do something they themselves have no idea of, which is no doubt a way by which they earn their living). No doubt religion can teach us a great deal, but an individual can be a very good person and do much good for others without the interference of religion, too.

Since I do not possess the knowledge to ascertain the existence of God, I shall, therefore, be my own God (as I have been for quite some time), because I am absolutely certain that I exist and I have the power to shape and direct my life the way I want to shape it and direct it.

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Being late for this or for that occasion had been something I could not help for the last few years. It is not that I did not have the intention to be on time, it is just that somehow I could not make it. People often remarked that my art of lateness was commendable (no doubt, their words were full of sarcasm), and I told them (giving it back in a similar manner) that I had mastered this art with a lot of practice and patience.

No matter how worse things got, I could not abstain from being late. Many a warning had come and many had gone, sometimes the warnings were severe in nature, but I still remained a late comer, a late doer, a late thinker.

The Mexican proverb “How sweet it is to do nothing, and afterwards to rest!” seemed really sweet but impractical in a world I inhabit. Going by the proverb, I would not be worried about being on time at all. But, alas, the world is a busy place which gives nothing for free (no bread, no butter). In this busy world one cannot simply be lazy and defy what one must do.

But, lately, I have become somewhat sensitive, and I can sense that people are not quite happy when I keep them waiting for something or the other and turn up at my own sweet time.

When you are not on time you become unreliable. People would (even as you express your interest to do something) doubt you or dismiss you as though you are a non-entity. Being late only devalues a person’s status, and the best thing one can do is to shrug off this habit and learn to be on time. Here are a few ways which would help you (which I am also following) to be on time:

Sleep a little early so that you get up a little early (a cliche, no doubt; a helpful one, nevertheless).

Do not snooze the alarm of your phone every few minutes. Once your hear the sound, wake up and stop it.

Be smart, that is to say, stop being lazy, which is again to say, if you have to do something, do not think over it for too long, just do it.

Have some buffer time in hand. You might be an optimist and you might think that you have enough time and you can easily catch up, but it does not happen so easily. You would not even know where or how the ‘enough time’ which you thought you had, had gone, and you would start panicking and get frustrated (and kick your dog). It is always good to have some buffer time (15 to 20 minutes), and you will be a little early, not a little late. If you happen to be too early, have a book handy, and your extra time would become productive.

I hope that you, as much as I, gain by being on time what you and I have lost by being late.

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Among all the resolutions I had made at the starting of this year, one was to travel to as many places as I could. Travel, as you know, expands one’s mental horizon. When you travel, whether you like it or not, you would come across new people and new happenings, which would add to your experience. If you are a writer who has been suffering from writer’s block, travel, do, and see how people throw their stories at you.

My country, India, is vast and I have always had the desire to see all the states of India. If one visits the different parts of India (from the most modern to the remotest), perhaps he/she would not need to see a foreign country, because within India one would come across so many things that would seem foreign. The weather in some parts of our country vary from the weather in the other, when the temperature soars above 35 degree in Mumbai or above 40 degree in Delhi, the temperature at Dras in J&K or at Gurudongmar in Sikkim can be in the minus, and in some other parts the temperature would be moderate. The people in one part speak a different language and have their unique identity and their special cuisines, while the people in the other part display a different lifestyle and set of values.

I do harbour a desire to see some foreign lands too, and that I want to do without any discrimination, which, in other words, means that I really wish to see the underdeveloped as well as the developed and the developing countries of the world. First and foremost, however, comes my own country; once I have covered all of India, perhaps, I can think about visiting some foreign countries.

At the starting of the year I had gone with some of my colleagues to the beach side destination in Maharashtra called Kihim.

In March I intended to go to the North of India, especially to cover the golden triangle. The Golden Triangle, not to be confused with the Golden Temple in Amritsar (Punjab), includes three places in North India, namely, Delhi, Agra and Jaipur, and the three locations seem to form the shape of a triangle, thus the name ‘triangle’ was given to it. The three locations are a very popular destinations among the foreigners as well as the domestic tourists. Due to some reasons, I had to change my plan and I ended up doing a solo trip to the south of India (covering Chennai, Pondicherry, Bangalore and Mysore).

Thereafter, I had gone to Guwahati and Barak Valley in Assam, Dimapur in Nagaland (though Kohima was also in the itinerary especially because it happened to be the Hornbill Festival time) where I had spent a considerable amount of time during my childhood.

Last of all, in December, my family and I had gone to the following North Indian destinations: Delhi (the land of great politics and power), Gurugram (Gurgaon) in Haryana (where my younger brother stays), Haridwar and Rishikesh in Uttarakhand (considered holy sites), Agra (where the Taj Mahal is at), Mathura and Gokul (again two holy sites) in Uttar Pradesh.

I will write about the aforementioned places in greater detail by and by.

If I had more money and if my leave from office could be extended a little more, I would have heartily visited many other places (or revisited some).

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The night is still
Every few minutes the trains roll in
And the silence breaks
All thoughts halt
Then again everything goes quiet
And nothing comes
Between the sadness of my life
And the stillness of the night.